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Little Did I know

Published March 23, 2023 By 8ijay.shrestha

There are no cheatsheets to live a successful, happy, merry life. Life’s grind. ~ author

Jeremy Zucker – Cry with you

Yesterday it was my 5th interview for Bank of America, Charlotte, NC. Tomorrow we’ve one more scheduled for 2pm EST. It’s been precisely 5 months and 2 weeks since I started working for the bank as an Application Architect. However, little did I know, from the month of February, 2023, I would already start taking interviews for the new candidates across the bank’s many software development teams. Little did I know, from the 1st week of March, 2023, I would be an On-shore Dev Lead for an agile team I currently work at.

On one hand, It’s humbling to have trust of my manager, as well as the leads from other agile teams in the bank who’re also amongst the interviewers panel. While on the other hand, I’m also on perpetual spotlight; Where my actions, in-actions, my ways of communicating, deliberate listening, my ways of shaping the interview, my questions, my answers, every words I utter, words that I don’t, … generally my character as a whole is nakedly microscoped by the age-old, white-haired, wise and experienced employee of this giga-normous bank! 

Side note: As of today, Bank of America provides service to it's clients from around 35 different countries with over 200,000 employees.

Little did I know I’ll have too much too soon on my vanilla, clean, scared plate.

Lastly, from someone who has taken 100s of interviews back home and already did plenty here, few takeaways for the prospective interviewee, plus a note to myself as well: 

Caution: This is not The Template; it's merely just one of many templates that works for me -- specially for technical/ coding interviews:
  1. Don’t ignore non-behavioral questions. Too much talking is a bad sign. Not talking enough is also a turnoff. There has to be a right balance between the two. Qualities such as authenticity, confidence, preparedness or lack there-off always find ways to crack open if there’re any ingrained in the candidate on the table .
  2. It’s always a good thing to dress well for the interview. Amplifies seriousness because the alternative genuinely sucks.
  3. Can’t stress enough,”Be prepared” for the interview (Practice. Practice. Practice). Do not try your LUCK. Do not expect an easy way in.
  4. Ask as many questions before diving into the solution to the coding problems.
  5. Explain how you intend to solve the problem before even writing a single piece of code.
  6. Write.Your.Code!
  7. Show utter enthusiasm throughout the period of interview (this has to be driven by homework of healthy preparedness), and not to miss if you may give signs of willingness to grow at par.
  8. One last thing i liked: If you’re unable to solve the coding challenge problem, tell the interviewers that you’ll get back to them with the solution. And, actually find ways to do it.

Namaste.

Categories:family Literature